Google is exploiting the requirement for age verification to set up Google accounts for future purchases.
So then, how do you prove that you are in a different country? Easy, right? There are multiple sources of information that can prove your location - GPS, mobile service provider information, IP geo-location, Wifi SSID databases... . But no - none of that is enough. You have to add a local payment method! And coincidentally none of the payment methods other than credit card information works - not even the one provided by mobile service provider. So, you are forced to register your credit card information to prove your location.
Now that your have proved your location and installed the essential apps you need, may be it's time to delete the credit card information. What if you accidentally subscribe to some service you didn't want? After all, you aren't subscribed to any service or bought anything with the newly entered card. So it should be easy to delete it, right? NO! You are not allowed to delete your only registered payment method! [1] Now it's open forever as a payment method for online services or Google pay.
Google's tactics here are sleazy, underhanded and manipulative. And what of the complaints they receive about it? See for yourself - discussion locked and disabled! I don't know at what point their behavior is declared illegal and anti-social.
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/10797082?hl=en&...
In Canada at least, through Visa and Mastercard, your expiry date is automatically updated with various people.
This means that never expire, may be just that.
https://www.bngpayments.net/automatically-update-expired-car...
Just imagine that! The lengths you have to go to avail public services and protect your personal information from a giant corporation!
And? I create a "profile" in my mind of every new human I interact with, and every human I read about or hear about even without interacting with. It's a basic human function.
When I gain a new business client, I create a profile of them too. This might start with a phone number, but over time, expand to include an email address, knowledge about their location, work hours, bank of choice, etc. Most businesses do this and always have.
Consent isn't required for this.
Corporations may be legally people, but they are not individuals. They are not human. And we should not treat them as such.
- logging to gmail on a non logged in android ? This logs the entire phone to the accounts
- chrome and online google services account are intertwined
Because whatever happens in court (if it gets that far), they'll have years of appeals to go, and that'll be some future Google employee's problem not the current people.
Like when governments agencies ask to both "disable all tracking of what their employees do on the platform", to ensure private data and GDPR like stuff are ok. They also ask to specifically "enable full logging of all access to their data" for security reasons.
So: "sed -i 's/tracker/logger/g' codebase" and everyone is perfectly happy.
I wonder does GDPR specify different categories of consent which must be specifically and separately requested?
Though what you're describing would also be illegal. GDPR does not allow requesting consent for such broad data processing just to fulfill a legal requirement to verify the user's age, and then denying access to the service if the user understandably refuses to give consent.
Google has an obligation to verify age. Google also has an obligation to limit tracking of personal information to usages that have been consented to. Neither of these obligations negate the other, and if Google never put it onto their feature roadmap, that just means that Google has been negligent in fulfilling their obligations.